Hot Chip got where they are now by embracing their eccentricities. They first stood out not because of their shoddy indie-R&B homages but through Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard’s vocals, through the moments of melancholy that shook the thoughts of hedonism and perpetual coked-outness that defined mainstream dance music and electro over the last five years. On 2008’s Made in the Dark, the band’s triumph wasn’t in delivering anything as propulsive as “Over and Over” but in a number of strikingly soulful ballads that proved far better than they had any right to be.
One Life Stand is the least animate Hot Chip album yet; it’s a record about aging and about fidelity and an album more defined by the moods of: rather than designed to accompany: a night out. It is their most eccentric album, their most indulgent and perhaps their least accessible, but likely one that hits more than it misses in spite of its occasionally overlong songs and unsuccessful detours. Taylor has never sounded better and Goddard has never sounded worse (in a good way), and their New Order homages have never been as restrained or as tasteful: which is something, given that half this band’s output could be described as aping New Order in some way or another. Furthermore, Charles Hayward, formerly of This Heat, plays live drums on much of the album, but not once do his performances call out for attention; these songs don’t demand that, and as a result he sounds surprisingly well-integrated.
Whereas Made in the Dark was defined by its split between uptempo numbers and attempted neo-soul balladry, this album blends those strands together with some success. Both Taylor and Goddard obsess over heart and lung imagery, which shows up everywhere. This culminates in the chorus to closer “Take It In,” a move so utterly shameless that it’s almost irresistible; the song’s minor-key, dour A section suddenly soars into a B section that virtually screams for attention by contrast.
On the way there, there’s a whole lot of experiments; perhaps in the spirit of their collaboration with Robert Wyatt and Geese, there are steel drums all over the record, as well as what can only be described as a stunning homage to Wyatt’s own compositions in the final third of “Slush,” when horns completely redefine the song’s arrangement in its coda. “Alley Cats” works as a mood piece; Taylor sounds winsome and aching at the song’s end, but Goddard’s vocals sound utterly exhausted, and somehow the interplay renders them both more compelling.
The only real misfires here are moments like “I Feel Better,” which attempts heavily autotuned vocals (as everyone does now) and fails to stop them from defining the song as the one with autotune on it, for some reason, and the fact that these songs are often too long, as is the case with “Hand Me Down Your Love” and the album’s title track, though both are good. The album’s sequencing renders it far more exhausting than it ought to be, especially given that “Take It In,” the most immediate song here, is saved for the very end, and some of these songs’ stranger moments, like the chiptune leads on “We Have Love,” are near-impossible to justify or defend. As a whole, this is a far better record than it has any right to be, further proof that Hot Chip are more than merely a goofy dance act or part of any 2000s trendhopping.
